Broadcom to challenge Qualcomm’s LTE dominance

Broadcom has started sampling its first LTE enabled mobile chips. According to Bloomberg, the new chips will probably start generating revenue next year, which means they are not coming anytime soon.

Broadcom CEO Scott McGregor said the company is trying to build on its success in other areas of connectivity. Broadcom is the top provider of mobile combo chips that deliver WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity. Getting into the LTE market is the logical next step, and since quite a few SoC makers still don’t offer on-chip LTE, Broadcom could be looking at a pretty big market, ripe for the picking.

Will Strauss, an analyst at Forward Concepts, believes LTE will open a range of opportunities in certain markets.

“There’s no way you get a top-tier phone in the U.S. unless you’ve got LTE,” Strauss said. “Qualcomm and Samsung pretty much owned the market last year.”

Qualcomm dominates the LTE market. It supplied 86 percent of the 47 million LTE-enabled chips shipped in 2012, while Samsung supplied 9 percent to its own phone division.